


The Death of Ladybug & Chat Noir, or, The Lamentable Tragedy of the Miraculous Seven: A tragedy in five acts, seven chapters, and nine parts.

by Bennet_Doyeni



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Far Future, Gen, Graphic Injury, Immortality, Major Violence, Minor Character Death, Strong Language, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-07 01:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12830454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bennet_Doyeni/pseuds/Bennet_Doyeni
Summary: All things fade with time. People become stories, stories become legends, and legends become forgotten. Some however, remain who remember. Nino Lahiffe, granted an extraordinarily long life by the turtle miraculous, has become the next great guardian, and part of what he guards is the story of Ladybug and Chat Noir, the story of the rise and fall of the Miraculous Seven, and the destruction that they left in the wake of their fall. This story is about all these things, and it is about what happens after destruction has stalked its black path, chasing the ever-moving change. It is about Memory and Victory, Unity and Purity, Glory and Entropy, and it is about Liberty.





	The Death of Ladybug & Chat Noir, or, The Lamentable Tragedy of the Miraculous Seven: A tragedy in five acts, seven chapters, and nine parts.

**Author's Note:**

> Major thanks to RecklessRoxy & TheBlackAngel for betaing, & to the organizers of MBB for making me actually finish something. Thanks to tumblr user Baneismydragon for pinch hitting in response to this story. And, as always, thanks to the nerd that got me involved with this show in the first place, you know who you are.

Prologue 

* * *

 

All things fade with time. People become stories, stories become legends, and legends become forgotten. They resurface sometimes, they mutate and become strange, the artifacts from them that remain become confused, lost and refound, misfiled and misattributed. Even buildings eventually forget their purpose, ownership changes hands, a church is converted into apartments, apartments converted into a museum, a museum into a shopping mall, change touches everything, and where change walks, destruction is not far behind.

 

This story is about all these things, and it is about what happens after destruction has stalked its black path, chasing the ever-moving change. It is about Memory and Victory, Unity and Purity, Glory and Entropy, and it is about Liberty.

 

I

Chapter One: Memory, or, The Storyteller

* * *

It doesn’t matter how you met him. Maybe you found a certain ring, or pair of earrings, or one of the other pieces of jewelry that has floated through the centuries, maybe not aimlessly, but guided only loosely. Maybe you stumbled into a certain library and asked the right questions. It doesn’t matter, you met him.

 

The Storyteller is old, his brown skin wrinkled and leathery, his face filled with the ghosts of emotion, laugh lines and tear lines, his hands callused but still steady as they shuffle the books, putting each one in the right place calm and quiet, quick and sure. The bracelet around his wrist is distinctive, the only piece of jewelry that he wears, a simple jade tortoiseshell on a simple leather band. Every so often he will rub the bracelet and begin a story, hands still moving the books, voice low and soft, the kind of voice that comes with living with books for many years, the voice of a veteran librarian, and if you are quiet and interested, and willing to look a little bit foolish, following an old man down rows of old shelves filled with old books, then you will get to hear the stories.

 

The stories sound strange at first, names you recognize with plots that are unfamiliar, plots you recognize with strange names attached. Stories connected that shouldn’t be, stories disconnected that should be. But if you question him, or contradict him, the stories end. He goes back to sorting the books in the quiet of the library, and you go home, or at least, you leave the library; unsatisfied. So you listen for a long time, quietly, without interrupting. You listen to him talk about Hercules and Hippolyta, Joan de Arc and Blackbeard, Myths and Legends, stories from before the time people had names, fictions that have authors attributed to them, and all of them he tells as true. All of them he tells with the truth as a given.

 

If you come back often enough, and listen long enough, and are careful and respectful and don’t interrupt, then one day The Storyteller will put down his books and look at you, acknowledging you for the first time. He will tell you to follow him, and he will take you to the conference room at the back of the library. The conference room is old and dim, paneled in a dark stained wood and lit through stained glass windows that wrap around the length of the room, animal motifs running through other fantastic scenes. The room is quieter even than the main area of the library insulated from the rustle of pages and the tapping of keys and the humming of the lights.

 

The story will start the same as his other stories, for the most part. His voice will be the same quiet beat, driving the story forward. His hands still move constantly, though now that they aren’t sorting or shelving or otherwise manipulating books, the are working for the story, emphasising his points and illustrating the scope. The story starts with an old man. A different old man, in a time long ago, before space travel had really taken off, before the war, and the rebuilding, and a hundred other things. The story starts with two children, maybe they’re your age, maybe they’re younger. They fight monsters and save their city again and again. They become more than themselves and however high they rise the challenges always seem to rise just above them. And then, just as he is building to a climax, just as these children, these heroes are about to finally begin to understand why, the lights in the library will turn off and then on, and a voice will come over the PA system and announce that the library will be closing in 15 minutes, and the story will be over. The old man will stand up from the conference room table, and thank you for listening to an old man, and will ask that you come back the next day, so that he can continue the story.

 

That night you will wonder at what you have heard, as you walk through the cooling streets of the city, the asphalt giving up the early summer heat to the evening air. You will wonder at Ladybug and Chat Noir, at their heroics, at the way that two children kept identities hidden, at the responsibilities that they took on. You will wonder at the dangers that they faced, the monsters and the intrigues, at the depravity that could drive Hawkmoth to send such things at children. You will wonder at the storyteller at the details that he can conjure with a breath, at the certainty with which he speaks about events that happened well before living memory. You will wonder if anything you heard today was true. The next day though, you will find yourself drawn back to the library, back to the old man, back to the stories. It may not even be intentional, you may find yourself pushing open the heavy oak doors of the library almost absent mindedly, your body moving without your conscious attention. Or maybe you came intentionally, maybe you decided it didn’t matter if the stories were true or not, that you had to hear them anyways, that this was something that was important. Regardless, you will sit down at the old wooden table in the conference room and look up at the central panel of stained glass, watch as the light streams past the red and black glass, throwing rainbow patches of light across the room.

 

The storyteller will join you eventually, he will take his place at the end of the table, he will rub his bracelet and he will begin the story again. “We didn’t know then, what Ladybug and Chat Noir would become, we didn’t know how they would make us into better people, and we certainly didn’t know how they would tear us back down.”

 

II

Chapter Two: Victory, or, The Heroes of Paris

* * *

 

“I turned 17 that summer, and I’d known that my best friends were the masked heroes battling Hawkmoth for almost two years, Adrien and Marinette had been joined by Alya as Volpina and Chloe as Queen Bee, and they were exhausted, all four of them. I’d been a bit jealous of them at first, once I’d gotten done being mad about them hiding this kind of secret from me for over a year. I thought that them being chosen meant that I wasn’t as good as them, or that there was something they had that I didn’t. But as I watched the akuma attacks kept coming, relentless, and the four of them began to feel the strain. I hate to admit it, but it wasn’t until the first real casualty that I really got over it. I realized that they weren’t heroes or better people, they were my friends and now they had the weight of a life on their consciences. After that, something had changed about them. They didn’t laugh as much, they started telling people, just a few at first, but enough to help them, they started getting serious about finding Hawkmoth.

 

Finding Hawkmoth in his own home was hard on Adrien. Nobody expected that Paris’s own supervillain and one of the most respected men in the fashion industry were one and the same; though, only a few people who knew Gabriel could say they were honestly surprised. I know I wasn’t. What followed was a quick, devastating battle that left Paris in ruins and permanent scars on all of my friends. I missed most of it, and I’m glad for that, but still, some part of me is morbidly curious about what happened that night. There were some things that they shared, in time, as therapy and distance numbed some of the pain.

 

Alya remembered the scene outside the manor the best, its epic scale impressing itself on her writer’s eye. Four heroes, crouched, battle ready, the darkening sky in front of them, the last vestiges of the setting sun behind them, facing down against eight akuma, outnumbered two to one. She remembered the chaos of that fight, trying desperately to draw out the Akuma from the city, away from populated areas, failing. She remembered one of the Akuma, the way that it fell, body reverting to its human form in the air. She remembered diving for the body and sickening feeling of knowing that she would be too late. She remembered other things too: she remembered the smell of the stew that was simmering on the stove in the kitchen whose wall she got knocked through by the leaden fist of a giant, she remembers thinking that the wallpaper was unbearably tacky before hitting the opposite wall and continuing through.

 

Marinette remembered the mad dash to get to Adrien, she remembered trying desperately to break through the immovable wall of Akuma only to be drawn away again and again by some new threat. She remembered the strange mix of exhaustion and elation brought on by extended battle, several transformations long with rests hard won by her colleagues and allies. Her friends. She remembered the darkness that seemed to surround the manor like a tangible force, a wall of violet umbra, another barrier separating her from her love. She remembered thinking that, one way or another, this would be the end. She remembered the ache in mind and body as her yo-yo moved faster and her plans grew more complex than in any fight before. She remembered the glimmer of hope that sparked bright in her heart every time they managed to defeat an akuma, to remove one more barrier between her and the true fight, the fight happening in the center of the storm.

 

Chloe shared the most of what she remembered, she remembered the the fight well enough, but what she talked about, with me at least, was how she knew that Adrien would be at the heart of it, that he would be the one to confront his father, their enemy. That there was no one in the world who was better equipped to take down Hawkmoth, to take down Gabriel. Knowing that there was no person in the world for whom it would be harder. No person in the world over whom Gabriel had more power. No akuma who would be more eager for a word of affirmation from him. Knowing that nothing would be more dangerous to their mission, their team, their world than the one thing that now might be in Hawkmoth’s grasp. She remembered the fear settling in her stomach. The fear that out of the darkness, their friend would emerge with a new hatred in his eyes. That Hawkmoth would take advantage of the wrath of a gentle man. She remembered the fear of fighting her oldest and only friend.

 

Adrien didn’t speak of what happened, not to me, not more than twice anyways. What happened in that dark cloud is likely best left between father and son, both long dead now. Suffice it to say that Adrien lived to hold his silence, and his father died to keep his.

 

Ladybug’s lucky charm fixed a great deal of the damage, but there are limits to what magic can do, even to magic as powerful as the primal force of creation itself. So, we had won. _They_ had won. Not easily, and not without paying a great cost, but victory nonetheless. After their pyrrhic victory, they stumbled back to me. To the house that was our home and our fortress. Back to me, the civilian, the alfred, the accomplice. I made soup, and they bandaged their wounds as best they could. We ate in silence. There was nothing to be said.

 

Master Fu came to us the next day, as the first light of dawn broke over the new Paris, over the destroyed and the restored alike. Whether he came to celebrate or teach or apologize we didn’t bother to find out. The battle had left scars that would take a long time to heal, if they ever would, and he had no small part in the guilt. My friends had had enough of him, enough of the weight that he had shoved off onto their shoulders. I, on the other hand, was intrigued. I have always loved a good story, and few things make a good story as well as mystery, and Master Fu had mystery aplenty. I chased after him when my friends had chased him away, and he allowed me to pursue.

 

That night, I became the holder of the turtle miraculous, and, like that, we had all seven of the items of power. I was unprepared for what both things would bring, but I faced them with enthusiasm. Looking once more into the night, with the light of home behind me I watched as Master Fu disappeared into the darkness. That would be the last time any of us saw him. I spent the rest of the night with my friends, mostly in silence.

 

The next morning, Paris awoke and took stock of the damage. Buildings had been destroyed, and most of the windows in the south west part of the city shattered by one of the Akuma’s sonic attacks, but — miraculously, there were no casualties, Marinette’s Lucky Charm had spared us that, at least. So, we got to work. There wasn’t much we could do about shattered glass, even with five miraculous wielders between us, but we could help with clearing rubble and lifting fallen varia. It was a strange kind of holiday in Paris that day, everyone out in the streets, doing their part to clean up the city that they love. They, the ordinary people of Paris, were the true heroes that day, helping each other out making sure that each person was taken care of. Those with homes left standing opened their doors, those with food went and shared it, those with the experience or the training or just the desire to help went to the clinics and hospitals and did what they could. That night, with power still out in the north and east of the city, Paris became a city of a different kind of light, windows glowing with millions of points of candlelight- a vigil for childhoods lost, it felt to us. As we watched nightfall from the rooftop of our building the city seemed to mirror how we felt, battered but not broken, damaged but with the hope of new light already dawning in our hearts.

 

Chapter Three: Unity, or, The Defenders of Earth

* * *

It was Chloe who helped me find holders for the moth and the peacock. It took time, but time was something that we had now. With Hawkmoth defeated and the seven Miraculous artifacts secured, there was a time of quiet. As Paris rebuilt itself, so did we, our battle had left wounds that would take time to heal. It was Chloe that noticed the spark in Max, the combination of determination and calculation that seemed to be at the very heart of him. The Moth was a tactician’s miraculous, and Max was a tactician. I agreed, and so did Marinette. Alya and Adrien had their reservations, but they agreed that a team of seven would probably be for the best. And so Max joined us, Papillion joining the ranks of what would become the Miraculous Seven.

 

The Peacock miraculous was trickier to find a wielder for, we knew less about it, Master Fu had told me parts of its lore, but still, finding someone that fit the pieces of what I knew was difficult. Finding someone both brash and honest, attention seeking and someone who could redirect that attention to what was necessary. Eventually, as I watched my pool of candidates dwindle I began to see something in Alix. She was loud, pink hair does that well, but she was honest, unflinchingly so. The Peacock reveals things to be what they are, and Alix had a knack for seeing those truths. When she joined us, we became the Miraculous Seven in truth.

 

For a time we were heroes, capable of feats of strength and dexterity, cunning and wisdom. We stopped crimes and prevented disasters, we kept people safe as best we could. Through this we became close, a family to one another, we argued and fought on occasion, but we always came back to each other, we always found forgiveness at the end of the day. We worked well as a unit, even outside of uniform. Marinette could sew up a person as well as a coat. Adrien knew how to make us all smile at the end of the longest days. Alya kept us inspired and never gave up. Chloe made us organized and on top of our work. Max helped us see the big picture, never losing sight of our goal. Alix fired us up, keeping us motivated even when it felt like there was nothing we could do. And me, I kept everyone fed and satisfied, as much as I could.

 

It was hard work, and when we moved away from each other it got harder. Still, in my mind those are halcyon days, all of them blending into an eternal summer, warm and exciting and lazy and joyful all at the same time. Even with Marinette and Alya in America for school and Adrien and Alix in Tokyo to deal with a new threat we managed to meet often, it turns out that superpowers can make short work of intercontinental travel. We didn’t just meet up for social gatherings though, there were a few crises that we faced together. We faced down the possibility of WWIII a few times together, we helped negotiate an agreement when the mole people started laying claim to the American southwest, and when aliens landed in Beijing, we were the ones that found out the hard way that they weren’t so interested in diplomacy.

 

Adrien and Alix were the first ones there. The ship had landed just outside the city and the terrain was rocky and wild, the ship had landed fast and hard making a cratered landing site. By the time Chat Noir and Peacock were on the scene the aliens had emerged from the spaceship are were setting up a perimeter around the edge of the crater, a dome of stone and steel. Chat strolled right up to the wall that was growing by the minute, I’m still not sure what his plan was, I don’t think Adrien knew what his plan was, but whatever it was, it was not to be. As he walked up, bolts of searing red energy blasted out from behind the wall and melted the ground where Chat had been. Peacock’s video relay caught it on tape as two more bolts of energy shot out narrowly missing Chat and turning a pile of gravel into a gooey, glassy mess. Alix was never one to back down from a fight and so she flew in, launching a barrage of quills at the beings that were constructing the wall, but had to swerve at the last minute as two fiery bolts nearly knocked her from the sky like a pink haired icarus. One of her quills struck true though and the alien dropped to the ground a violet haze spreading from where the point had pierced it. At this point the tone of the encounter seemed to shift and a barrage of bolts fired out at both Chat and Peacock, one of them grazing Chat’s arm burning away the suit and searing the flesh beneath. Peacock dove to grab him and carried him away, out of rage of the lasers.

 

The rest of us were already on our way, Myself, Max, and Chloe got there first, Alya and Marinette were a few hours behind, but they made it just as the sun was beginning to rise and the first of the chinese military was beginning to arrive at the impact site. Peacock was heading them off, playing the recording of what the lasers did to the rocks in the area, trying to get them to stand down while we dealt with it. Eventually Peacock managed to get them to hold off while we tried to handle the situation. I covered Volpina while she whipped up some distractions for the turret, meanwhile Peacock and Queen Bee started strafing, drawing the turrets fire further away from Ladybug and Chat Noir as they moved in close to disable the turret itself. As expected the tower fired again, a barrage of heat and light, one came towards me and I raised my shield and prayed, I felt the heat, I felt an impact, and then, nothing. I stopped and checked, shield: still there, arms: check, head: intact. Alya grinned at me, told me “nice work, turtle boy.” I grinned back. The tower kept firing, and I did my best to protect who I could. I suppose we all did, seven heroes working in concert, seven young people against an inhuman laser tower.

 

Our plan worked, the tower fell as Ladybug and Chat Noir, the Original heroes, the closest members of our team, moved in perfect harmony, circling ever closer to the tower while the rest of us kept the tower from focusing on them. Chat hit the base of the tower with a Cataclysm and Ladybug lept to the top of the tower with a mirror that lucky charm had given her and she turned the laser back on the tower, cutting a gash of molten metal down the side of the strange alien craft. As more of the purple haze rushed out of the gash in the ship, the lasers stopped, and soon the ship sat silent.

 

We were heroes in truth then, the videos of what we had done in Beijing spread across the world, and when a second alien craft landed, more gently, more diplomatically in Paris to apologize for our assumed losses, only to disbelieve the members of the UN that assured them that the Earth had been well protected from the marauders, that was when we became known as the Defenders of Earth.

 

That was our last mission as a whole team. After that we went our separate ways again, scattered across the globe. We basked in the glow of fame, we did interviews, and stopped crimes and conspiracies in teams of two or three, but after that nothing merited our full attention. Back in Paris I did my best to be a hero my friends could be proud of, upstanding and just, neither too reclusive nor too proud. My friends never disappointed me, they were flawed, to be sure, but they fought their flaws just as much as they fought crime. Max became a team player, working hard to control his disappointment when he was outshone, Alix struggled and often won against her impulsiveness, Chloe battled her pride, Alya her self-doubt, Adrien his sense of unworthiness, Marinette battled her guilt over not being able to save everyone.  We were heroes, we were unstoppable, we were still, in some ways, children. We thought it could last forever. It couldn’t, of course.

 

III

Chapter 4: Purity, or, The Fall of Heroes 

* * *

 

To see your friends fall apart from each other is painful. To see your friends ripped apart from each other is even more so. To see your family do that, it is beyond words. I am getting ahead of myself, forgive me, this is not something I like to talk about, even now. But you came for the story, and so the story you shall hear.” The storyteller pauses here and you can see him holding back emotions that threaten to overwhelm him. “Maybe it was our arrogance that brought that day to us, or maybe the seven of us had unbalanced the scales of fate and the universe was just evening out the odds again. Maybe it was just plain, dumb, bad luck. Whatever it was, when Chloe lay in my arms, breathing weakly, her life slipping through my fingers, it wasn’t a grand exit, it wasn’t a noble sacrifice, it was a dumb mistake. It was the result of playing the odds again and again, eventually you get screwed.

 

Everyone came back to Paris after that.

 

The six of us gathered in the house that we’d found when this began, our headquarters, our clubhouse. The six of us. The empty chair at the end of the table screamed of loss, the comb on the table was too painful to look at. Outside, Paris mourned. They mourned their hero, Queen Bee, fallen in their defense, another martyr of France. They mourned Chloe Bourgeois, the promising civic leader. Black flags flew from homes and office buildings, even the eiffel tower stood dark for a night. It was different for the six of us though. We knew that in the morning, life would continue, the bakeries would open, people would buy and sell, would talk and laugh, children would play, the sun would shine, and we would be forced to confront a world without Chloe, the royal pain, without Chloe, air support, a world without Chloe, our friend.

 

For a long time, we stood, our funeral attire feeling like lead, numb. But there was something that needed to be done, so I forced myself to speak, feeling like an ogre in a nursery, too clumsy, too indelicate, too likely to smash a beautiful thing.

 

“So. We should talk about what to do with Chlo- with the hairpin. About finding someone to take her place in the seven.”

 

In a short time, several important things happened. Alya’s face hardened into a stone mask, eyes cold as I’d ever seen them. Max nodded, as did Marinette, and Adrien shot me a look that pierced me deep.

 

“I have some id-” Max started,

“No. No. Absolutely not.” Alya was pale, almost shaking, but her voice was low and quiet. “This was not an unfortunate accident. This was our fault. This was the inevitable conclusion of our actions. We don’t need to talk about replacing Chloe, we need to talk about what the hell we’re doing.”

“We’re going good, Alya, we’re helping people.” Marinette seemed even smaller than usual, her voice hardly seeming to take up any space in the quiet room.

“Are we?” Adrien seemed even smaller than Marinette, shrinking himself in a way I hadn’t seen since his father was around.

“Or are we just dicking around with power that we have no idea how to handle.” Alya finished his question for him.

“Ok, we weren’t given answers, but we were given power, and that means we have a re-” Max was interrupted again, Alix speaking up for the first time since the funeral, “Clearly we can’t handle responsibility, because if we could, we wouldn’t. Fucking. Be. Here.”

This wake had spiraled out of control and was threatening to overwhelm me. I have thought about my actions that night many times over the years, and only sometimes can I make sense of them.

“Max is right, and you all need to pull your heads out of your asses and look at what we do. Chloe is dead and it was stupid and inevitable, but she saved people, we’ve all saved people, and that means that we don’t matter. It means that we have people that are relying on us to save them, and that we will be responsible when people that could have been saved aren’t.”

After that everyone took a step back. Adrien looked like the wind had been knocked out of him

“Nino, no. You can’t believe that, you’re too important, to me, to us, you’re not disposable, none of us are.”

“No, Nino is right, if we’re going to be heroes, then that means putting everything on the line for other people. I don’t know about responsibility, but it’s what I wanted, I thought it was what we all wanted.” Marinette shifted to stand behind me, putting space between herself and Alya.

“That is not what any of us signed up for, and you know that damn well Mari,” Alya said, “we do what -”

“And you know that we didn’t sign up for a damn thing, Alya, we were given this power because of who we are. I thought that meant something.” Marinette said, shouting the last words as Alya tried to shout over her.

 

The rest of the evening is a haze to me still, red tinted and furious, we took each other's words and used them as sticks to bludgeon each other with, in a vain hope that it would make us feel better about the fact that a piece of each of us was missing. I don’t remember who left first, but in ones and twos we stormed out of the place that had been our home, leaving the comb on the table, the catalyst of our rage lying cold and shiny on the table.

 

After that night, things had changed. We had crossed a line, or maybe we had created one, and none of us had any idea how to uncross it. I have no doubt that everyone else wanted, as much as I did, to make things the way they had been, but if there was a combination of words that could make that happen, none of us knew it. Alya and Adrien started meeting together, furtively, dropping their voices to hushed tones when I would walk by, Marinette noticed the same thing happening with Alix and Adrien, and so we decided that we too, should talk.

 

Max, Marinette, and I agreed that, perhaps, if we could find a suitable candidate for the comb, perhaps we could persuade the others to see our way of things. We were hopeful still, we thought that we could bridge the gap that had been created, maybe we were right, maybe there was a way. The way did not present itself to us though, and as we searched for a candidate, I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had looked for someone suitable to wield one of these items of power. She had been at my side then, and I felt the absence acutely, I kept looking over to gauge her opinion of one candidate or another only for my eyes to meet an empty space. Maybe that was why it took so long to find a candidate, or maybe it was because I was working semi-secretly, hopeful as we were of convincing the other three that there was someone else worthy of the comb, we had decided that it might be a good idea to find the person first, before continuing the conversation. So I didn’t advertise my intent, and perhaps that slowed me down.

 

Whatever it was, I was no closer to finding a suitable candidate when Max told me that he had see Alix and Alya whispering together, and believing they might be upto something, he had sent an akuma to listen to them and it had overheard them talking about finding a way to destroy miraculous. Max didn’t know if they were close to finding an answer, he didn’t even know if such a thing was possible, but if it was we would need to find a candidate before they decided that these things were too dangerous and decided to destroy all of them, after all, that was more or less what they had said that night. So I redoubled my efforts, and, when I finally found a candidate that passed every test, we called for a meeting. The meeting never happened, at least, not in the way we’d hoped.

 

The night before we were set to meet and discuss the fate of the comb miraculous, Max woke me up in the dead of night. He had set up a network of akuma to warn him if someone tried to break into the house. The alarm had been sounded, someone was in the house. Marinette was on her way already. We rushed over to defend the future that we had built up in our heads. The night was dark, a new moon and a veil of fog conspiring to make the glow of the city of lights a impediment to sight, filling the night with spectres.

 

IV

Chapter Five: Glory, or, The Clash of Titans 

* * *

 

The house was already chaotic when we got there. The fog made the glow of the polychrome fire spread strangely as though the air itself had captured the color, in the night air everything was oversaturated and underexposed, I could hardly make out the shadows but there were enough to know that Ladybug was out numbered. They were fighting already, one of her assailants sending strange bolts of energy that she just managed to deflect with her yo-yo. I saw a shadow come behind her and I acted, diving through the window and rolling, coming up with my shield between her and the incoming blow. Suddenly, the world seemed to go quiet, and we fought, back to back. Papillion darted in, his powers ill suited to this kind of confrontation, and he fell back again, bleeding from a blow to the temple.

 

I had been hit a few times too, but I was giving almost as good as I got, especially considering defense was more my specialty. Eventually the smoke from deflected beams of energy became too thick and the fight spilled out onto the street. Out of the corner of my eye I watched as a few akumatized people began to come out of their houses and fight the fire which was quickly becoming a larger danger than any of the assailants, with new blazes popping up all along the street. Papillion’s heroes were struggling to keep up with the barrage of new fires, we needed to do something about the source of those bolts. Ladybug shifted her stance slightly, but I still recognized it, even after so long apart, she was giving herself a few seconds to think. The bolts were coming at us from an downward angle, maybe thirty feet up, so when Ladybug cried ‘carapace, shield!’ I wasn’t surprised. I crouched down. I put my shield over my head. When I felt her feet land on my shield I propelled her into the air, Wonder Woman style. Ladybug landed a solid blow with her yo-yo. The head snapped back from the force. The flying figure fell, and was caught by one of the other fighters. They left the body, presumably unconscious, by the side of a building.

 

The fight raged on. It would be a lie to say that we didn’t know what we were doing. We had fought side by side for long enough that we could recognize each other when were were fighting head to head. But we didn’t want to know, so we ignored the voice in our head that said, you know that shadow, once that was a brother. We ignored those voices and pushed harder, pouring our grief into a game of keep away, golden comb shuttling back and forth between two sides, most cursed of shuttlecocks.

 

The comb flew into the air, knocked out of Ladybug’s grasp by a familiar quarterstaff. We watched as it spun through the fog. Papillon dived for it, ignoring his heroes for a second as he scrambled to change the game. He grasped it and cried out in victory. Without warning, a wall appeared in front of him and he crashed into it, slumping to the ground, body limp, comb tumbling free again. Then there were four.

 

The fight was something else now, two against two, friend against friend. As teams went we were well matched, neither Alya nor I had much offensive capability, but nothing is worth protecting so much as the light of creation, and nothing is so destructive as a lie with a black truth at the center. So we fought on, striving for a future that was clearly already lost. After this there was no chance for the miraculous seven to rise again, not in this age, not with these heroes, but neither could we peacefully retire, the weight of responsibility is too heavy a burden, and the destruction of power is no easy task. We had lost, all of us, already, but we fought on anyways, rage and grief manifesting and multiplying.

 

The night dragged on like a torturous crucible, battle constantly shifting, tactics staying the same. Alya sent a battery of illusions towards me and Marinette, Adrien blended in with the illusions, I stayed between the real him and Mari, mostly guessing right, sometimes having to run or dive to block a misjudged blow. This pattern held for what felt like seven ages, no serious wounds dealt, no serious wounds taken.

 

We all avoided using our extra abilities, saving our strength, avoiding the five minute tick down to real vulnerability. I wonder sometimes if that would have done it, if we had de-transformed. If we would have stopped fighting, or if we would have brawled in the street like out of control children. Whatever would have happened, I would trade more riches than I have ever seen for that outcome (and I have seen riches beyond belief, he tells you, and you believe him).

 

The fight does not end, though, you know this, I have not been subtle about it, and in many ways it may be that this fight was inevitable, a cruel universe’s preordained response to the accumulation of goodness. Maybe we were children, and foolish. Maybe we were the wrong people, maybe the powers themselves are too much. I have tried, tried so many times to remember why we kept fighting, why we didn’t stop when we realized who we were fighting, why we didn’t stop when Alix went down, or Max, why we kept fighting as the night turned from black to grey around us, and from grey to the first tinges of red and orange.

 

As the red light of dawn began to shine down the length of the narrow parisian street one last wave of identical Chat Noirs ran towards me, towards Marinette, posture low, claws ready to strike. Ladybug made broad sweeps with her yo-yo, poofing the illusions into wisps of morning fog, but not finding the true image, not finding Adrien. Then it was down to two, one from the left, one from the right, I said a prayer and dove to the left, shield up. Time seemed to go elastic, the masked face of my best friend growing larger and larger as I hurled towards him, shield angled to break his nose. My momentum carried me through the illusion and I cursed as I rolled, turning to see Ladybug and Chat Noir, my friends Adrien and Marinette, grappling, yo-yo and quarterstaff forgotten.

 

This next piece I can recall as if it were yesterday, the vividness of the image has not faded in the many years that have passed, (he says this in a way that tells you how much he wishes it would). I knelt on the cobblestones of that street, as the world stood still. I tried to move, to get between my friends, but I was too slow. Each of them pulled back one arm and raised it to the sky. I tried to cry out. Too slow. I tried to run faster. Too slow. I tried to do something, anything. Too slow.

  
I watched my friends silhouetted against the rising sun, one arm raised and one arm holding the other away, almost like a dance. I watched as the familiar black light began to bubble off of Chat Noir’s upraised hand. I watched as a familiar black glove formed itself around Ladybug’s hand, a dark mirror, reflecting the same dark light. I watched as the brightest futures I could imagine were consumed in that dark light.

 

V

Chapter Six: Entropy, or, Next to You 

* * *

 

Cataclysm was not intended to be used on living things. That does not mean that it does not work, destruction comes for all things after all. Perhaps it would have been a kindness if it was more efficient, more deadly. Perhaps it would have been kinder for both of them to have disappeared into a mist, dissipated by the red morning light. But when they brought their raised hands down, and dark light met dark light in a flash that was nothing but destruction, simple as that, they decayed in the way that people normally do. Wrinkles erupted across their faces, their knees buckled almost simultaneously, muscles and joints no longer able to support the weight of their suddenly frail frames.

 

I too sank to my knees, a great weight in my chest forcing me down. I saw as Alya landed across from them, wet streams already tracing their way down her cheeks. I looked back to where my friends lay, the morning sun too bright for my eyes.  

 

“I always hoped we’d grow old together, my lady”

“And I had hoped that I might be so lucky as to lie next to you.”

 

Adrien Agrest and Marinette Dupain-Cheng died hand in hand, a smile on each of their faces. For the second time that fall, Paris mourned. The next week, on November 1st, the day when the dead are remembered, their graves overflowed with wreaths and candles. I went late, when the spilled wax that covered the fresh earth was already cooled in the frost of the mid-autumn night. I added a stone to the piles by the headstones. I wept.

I did not yet realize the full weight of that night. The four of us that were left, spoke again, eventually. The four of us that were left, spoke again, eventually. Max and I were persuaded, we had done something that night that never should have happened, the miraculous were not entirely to blame, but they hadn’t helped either. The three unwielded miraculous were placed in the puzzle box that had been part of our inheritance from Master Fu, only a few years before. The four of us kept ours, we’d used them enough to know that sometimes the dangers of power must be risked. We knew the weight of that risk better now.

 

Alix didn’t use her power much after that. Peacock disappeared from the public eye. She started applying herself more at her father’s workshop, bringing ancient things to new life, using the technology of the future to preserve the past. It was her that collected the stories that Master Fu had neglected to pass down with the power. It was her that found the stories of Joan d’arc, of Hercules, of the first Volpina, of the Heroes without name that appear throughout history, doing what they feel they must because they are the only ones that can. She became a storyteller, a curator of good intentions, telling the story of ordinary people raised to extraordinariness by chance or by intent. And when she was old she laid the foundation for this building, for the Miraculous Memorial Library. It has been many things, since it was built. This building has been chapel and shelter, warehouse and even, for a short time, a bar, and now it serves again the purpose for which it was built.

 

Max, on the other had, never stopped using his miraculous. He started an organization dedicated to the use of power in service of others. He built the organization to last, and, when he was ready, he passed down the moth miraculous to his successor. It was Max who prepared the world for a future that it could be proud of. It was Max who taught the world that the inaction of many good people does more harm than the actions of the few people who wish harm on the world. He became a guardian, a bastion of goodwill, protecting a future his friends never got to see. And when he passed on, his organization outlived him, making the world a better place for many centuries after his death. They were many things, the people of that organization, they were builders and architects, doctors and lawmakers, factory workers and professors, and, when needed, they were warriors, paladins on behalf of human thriving. Now, they are one lonely librarian, tending the embers of history that the light not be extinguished, that we may not make another loop of the perilous circuit of history.

 

Alya took a middle way, neither abdicating her powers nor integrating them fully into her life. She remained a masked vigilante, doing good beyond the boundaries of organizational structure. It was a long time before we talked. We, who had seen the final moments of Ladybug and Chat Noir, we who had been too slow to stop it, we who carried the guilt of that day deep and tight in our chests. There are few things that she did that the world still feels to day, these many years later. Such is the code of the vigilante: make life better here, today, do what you can and let the future worry about itself. One thing still remains though.

 

After that day, I was lost. There is a stretch of years that I don’t remember to this day, I wandered through them, so numbly, so disconnected from the reality of life around me. It was Alya that pulled me out of it. I had returned to the seine, thinking about that night and looking out over the dark waters, wondering just how long I’d have the memories. I was starting to realize, you see, what the true power of the turtle miraculous was. Starting to understand that Master Fu had been young for such a wielder. I was not sure that I was prepared for that kind of a burden, I wasn’t sure I was prepared for another ten years, let alone another hundred or more. If I had known then that I would be alive still, well. She was there though, and she landed on the bridge with a step lighter than a feather. We talked for a long while that night. We talked of the night, of the stars that we could see through the blaze of Paris light, of the moon, and of the loss that we felt still. We talked of the day, of the way we had decided to live, of our friends that we still had and who we ought to cling to. We talked of dawn and evening, of the thoughts that we hadn’t dared to share with anyone else, of beginnings and endings, of life and death, both longed for and feared.

 

We moved closer after that, I spent some time in New York, we shared an apartment for a while while helped Max start an american branch. We talked a lot then, about life and death, and she gave me hope that new life could be found, even for me. A few years later, I had moved back to Paris, helping Alix start the collection of works that would become the first iteration of this library, but I visited her where she was living in Michigan. We drove out to Lake Michigan together, her youngest, Jabez, babbling in the back seat, we spent most of the drive in a comfortable silence, it was obvious then that we had been through something together that had tested us, and we had come out the other side, friends, even still. As I splashed into the August-warm waters of the lake, I knew that she had given me a hope to last for a long, long time.

 

I have spent a long time here, I have been many things: historian and guardian, godfather and friend, hero and villian. I spent a long time protecting the memory of what we had done, both good and bad. I spent a long time watching, and guiding as the miraculous have left and re-entered the world. I spent a long time tending the small, fragile flame of hope, given to me by Alya and Jabez. I spent a long time watching them, and the ones that came after them, as an uncle, a godfather, a family friend. The turtle miraculous has given me a long time here, I have spent too long rebuilding my own hope to say too long, but sometimes still, I think it. I thought it often, during the war, but my hope sustained me through that, and it will sustain me now. Now I am here, I am a Librarian, a storyteller, and I have told you my story. History is not a thing that just rests here in the pages of books, it is a thing that is living, dancing all around us, we must know it, we must know the dance so that we too, can dance, whirling history around us, avoiding what can be avoided and accepting with joy what must be accepted, changing what can be changed, and carrying what must be carried. So go, dance, change what can be changed!”

 

Chapter Seven: Liberty, or, After Us 

* * *

 

It doesn’t matter how you met him. The storytellers lined face is damp with tears as he finishes his story. He stands up and leaves the room, those old, careful hands closing the door quietly behind him. You are alone in the room, it is dim and warm, and you can see the stained glass with new eyes now. The motifs and colors unfold themselves to you. There, in that panel you can see the jade and tortoiseshell of the storyteller’s bracelet, a turtle with a golden halo, facing into the future with the patience of a creature that has seen much. And here a moth, pale lavender and grey, circling a bright and terrible victory. Just next to the center there is the bee in the honeycomb, each of the sides marked by another symbol, seven heroes, friends. There a peacock spreads its tail and sheds a tear, beauty and truth, trying to do what is best. Then, a fox, wild and alive, scrabbles for victory against an unseen enemy, expending all its energy in a blaze of glory. There in the center, a cat is silhouetted against a setting sun, black and purple and red and orange, hope and death and a long, long wait till morning.

 

You stand and turn to go, to leave the world of the story and re-enter the world of books and librarians, of warm summer days and hot city streets. And there, on the door, you see one last motif: a ladybug, small, but armored against all comers, slow, but making its way towards the light of the rising sun.

 

As you push out through that door and into the bright light of the library, you wonder. At the quality of light coming through the windows, dawn has been transfigured into dusk in that small old room. You wonder at what you have heard, at the story of friendship and destruction, at the feckless cruelty and incredible grace of the actors. You wonder at the honest look in the old, old, man’s eyes as he told you that he had lived to see so much of human history, as he revealed to you that magic was real, that he had been one of the first people to meet the aliens.

 

The city streets are still warm from the day’s heat, and you wander through them again, but this time you stop, you see what is around you, you pay attention to the buildings around you, were they, you wonder, there to witness the story you just heard, was anyone? Or was it just a story, the cry of an old man desperate for company? Does it matter? You notice the trees planted along this street, they’ve been here for many years now, their trunks are wide and sturdy, their canopies a welcome shade during the hot summer days. Was the storyteller here to see them planted? Did he look at them and hope that there was one more thing that might outlive him? One more piece of an impossibly long legacy? You notice children playing in the driveway of the apartment building across from the library. How must he think of children, that storyteller, so far removed from childhood himself? Are they reminders of the mistakes of his youth, or do they remind him of the dangers of caring, of the shortness of normal human life? Do they annoy him? Amuse him? Does he even notice them after all this time?

 

The story started strangely enough, but by the time you have thought your way back to your house, the brightest stars just barely visible above the light of your city, you think you have grasped some part of its meaning. You had thought that the story was about Ladybug and Chat Noir, about Nino and Alya and Chloe and the Miraculous seven. You had thought that the story was about the storyteller, and this had made it strange. As you look up from your doorstep and look at the moon shining through the tree that spreads its leafy limbs over your yard and see the slightest sliver of crescent moon peek back at you, you know that the story had been about you. It had been a story about creation and destruction, about the line between love and hatred, it had been a story about the best and worst that people are capable of, it had been a plea from one who had seen enough of both to know that doing good is worth the risk, that goodness is not in grand gestures or great powers, but in the small, everyday actions that make up our lives.

 

Later, you go back to the library, your feet draw you there without your full recognition. The storyteller is gone, his cart of books sits, neat and sorted, at the end of a shelf, but he is nowhere to be found. You check the conference room, wondering if the story that he tells is unique, or if it is something special, if you, somehow, are special. The room is empty, the light from the murals painting rainbows over the empty mahogany chairs. You close the ladybug door again, noticing the stem that she climbs, new life from the soil of decay. You look at it and make a promise, half to her and half to yourself.

 

It is surprising how often goodness is a small choice, a matter of seeing a person as a person, recognizing the infinite complexity present in each person you encounter, of refusing to believe that a person can be anything less that that. It is surprising how often that small, simple choice can feel so hard, how often it can be easier to see a face as nothing more than a face, a body as nothing more than an obstacle to be overcome, to think of a person as a rival or a friend or a stranger. It is surprisingly hard to hold infinite complexity in your mind and not reduce it to abstraction. You struggle, because that too, is part of what goodness is, and you fail, because failure is inevitable, but it is not fatal and it is not permanent.

 

That is later though, tonight, the night is warm, and you can feel the grain of the wood beneath your toes, you pad though your quiet house, sit on your bed. Maybe you have a piece of jewelry to turn over in your hands as you ponder the events of the day, the events of the story. Maybe you don’t, maybe you have photographs of some many times great ancestor, a woman, young, with glasses and a flannel. Maybe you have nothing but a story, a series of events that may or may not have happened, the hopes of an old man now pinned on your chest like a badge, both joyful and heavy. The night is quiet but not silent, the insects call out into the air, the staccato accompaniment to the owl’s occasional melody. Even here, in the city, the night is alive with more than the noise of engines and sirens.

 

Perhaps you think of your family, asleep in the rooms around you, of the fights that you’ve had, of the way that your brother always argues with you, or the way that your younger sister always tries to get her way with your parents. Maybe you think of the family that is long distant from you, as you sit in a bed, surrounded by strangers, missing home. Maybe you think of the family that you’re longing for, of friends bound together by love and by duty, of a house teeming with life, and all that that entails. Whoever it is you think about, you think about your love for these people, and about the peril of loving, of the way that it opens you up to hurt, and opens you up to hurting the people that you love. You think about how much easier it might be if love could be forsaken, if that room in your heart could be given up for something more practical. You think about how much hurt the storyteller could have avoided if only. You remember the dampness of his cheeks the deep hurt in his voice and you resent him. You resent him for the obligation that you feel now, now that his hopes have become yours, now that you feel called to a life that is not safe, but joyful. You know that this is what that obligation means, you will hurt and you will be hurt, and that is the necessary cost of living a life with joy and with love. Risk is part of a life lived well. You fall asleep to an odd image, the cat and the ladybug have moved, like a sun and a moon in eclipse, and now they face the same golden hemisphere of light pouring over the horizon, sunset and sunrise at once, together.

 

Epilogue

* * *

All things fade with time, but that does not mean that they are lost, or that anything is ever fully forgotten. Just as something within the human soul remembers the stardust from which it was created, so too does the ground remember the cycles of life and decay that have created it. Destruction can stalk its black path for all eternity, and creation will follow behind, filling in the fertile rut with new life. It does not take much to see this for yourself, find any tennis court you like, and watch it for a few years as the surface cracks and puckers and seeds long buried erupt forth, life from lifelessness. However deep destruction reaches into the ground it can always find more life there. Life brings change, change destruction, and destruction new life.

 

This is a story about that cycle, it is about Memory and Victory, Unity and Purity, Glory and Entropy, and it is about Liberty. This story is about all of the little actions that make us into the people that we will be, about the control that we can have over those actions. This is a story about love.


End file.
